The high-quality high-resolution ortho-mosaic maps allow you to easily zoom in on any area for a detailed visual inspection. These farm infrastructure surveys show a full, high-definition picture of your farm from above, with accurate locations of fences, gates, dams, roads and other services. This imagery is up to 100 times better and more accurate than satellite or Google Maps. With aerial farm mapping you can:
- Quickly see the locations of gates, fences, dams, water courses, roads, buildings and more
- Easily identify and mark up land capability areas and soil management zones
- Locate and tag areas of interest including sites where soil or plant analysis has been undertaken, hazardous areas, areas that are boggy after rain, etc
- Calculate distances, volumes and area easily and quickly including paddocks, fence lines, roads, dams, etc
- Print accurate scale maps of your farm for planning or for use by employees, agronomists, crop consultants and contractors
You can easily switch between the analysis maps created from the images captured by the multispectral and thermal cameras. The Near-IR, Red Edge, Red and green spectrum images provide high resolution NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) maps. Where satellites often capture images at 50 metres per pixel, aerial surveys capture images at a minimum 20 centimetres per pixel – 250 times more precise than some satellite imagery. For smaller surveys, we can create imaging at 10 cm, 5 cm or even 2 cm per pixel. It’s the difference between seeing a field and seeing a plant.
We also provide imagery on demand, when you need it most (which is often just when you’re getting ready to irrigate a crop, apply fertiliser or pesticides, harvest the crop or see what can be salvaged after a storm or pest invasion).
It’s usually not convenient to wait 4-6 weeks for the next satellite pass, and even then you might not get imaging if it’s cloudy when the satellite passes over your farm. We can usually image your crop within 24-48 hours.
Drone-enabled scouting is a convenient way to collect the “what is happening right now” data layer. There are three main elements to using a drone effectively to do this: getting the sensors above the field, the sensors themselves, the data analysis.
NDVI reports are useful for a variety of agricultural purposes. An NDVI can clearly distinguish areas of the field where a crop is growing well from those where it is not, enabling zones to be created to target the right amount of fertilizer application to each spot on the field. Due to the way the plant reacts to stresses, an NDVI image can also reveal the presence of weeds, pests, water damage, and other problems giving the grower the information necessary to identify and quantify problems mid-season and then determine how to best address them.
NDVI crop health imaging can provide an early warning of crop stress and crop health issues including irrigation problems, lack of nutrition, weed and pest invasion, disease and more.
NDVI information can be used for:
- Plant health and stress levels
- Optimal fertiliser use
- Nitrogen management
- Identify insects and pest in crops
- Analyse plant disease
- Plant or weed identification
- Farm plan development
- Cultivation planning
- Harvest planning according to vigour
- Water and pesticide effectiveness/distribution
Thermal imaging in agriculture is relatively new and playing an important role in various fields of agriculture such as;
- Nursery monitoring
- Plant physiology analysis
- Irrigation scheduling,
- Soil salinity stress detection
- Plant disease detection
- Maturity evaluation
- Bruise detection of fruits
- Yield forecasting
NDVI is based on reflected light and has nothing to do with temperature, whereas a thermal camera completely disregards colour and shows actual emitted energy from plants. Because it shows the emitted energy, we can see disease or stress in a plant long before it begins to change colour.
Various studies have shown that the thermal infrared (TIR) part of the spectrum is more sensitive to determine water stress than other reflectance in visible, NIR, or SWIR wave- lengths since infrared (IR) thermometer measures the thermal temperature of the plant leaves or a crop canopy and it is known that once plants go into water stress; their stomata begin to close and cease to transpire, causing the plant to “heat up” and the canopy temperature to rise.
Plants also show disease and pest stress through tiny changes in temperature long before stress can be seen in foliage colour changes. That’s what makes thermal Imagery the most practical and useful imaging technology in agriculture today.